Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Tuesday February 25, 2014 @09:06AM
from the flu-nsa-llnl-juarez-waco-plf-hacker-cointelpro dept.

Advocatus Diaboli writes with this excerpt from an article by Glenn Greenwald on the pervasiveness of shills poisoning web forums: "One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It's time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.. ... Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the Internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: 'false flag operations' (posting material to the Internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting 'negative information' on various forums."
I guess Cryptome was right. Check out the the training materials provided to future forum spies.

If you ask that yourself, the tactics have succeeded halfway already -- seeding mistrust has worked.

So you should look at the message itself, not at the person you get the message from. If the message contains further tainting of a messenger, it will seed more mistrust. Try to focus on arguments of fact, not arguments of person or source. Then you will weed out most deception.

The problem with this is that mistrust has already been seeded for one party and once that occurs, full blown paranoia is only a couple of steps away. We already have a culture of anti-government rhetoric building. While many are chaotic, and completely lacking organization, there might be enough just to start trouble across the board. In short, they will probably end up reaping what they sew.

We already have a culture of anti-government rhetoric building. While many are chaotic, and completely lacking organization, there might be enough just to start trouble across the board. In short, they will probably end up reaping what they sew.

You're not wrong about the culture of anti-government rhetoric, but your last comment, about reaping what they sew, is off the mark and makes me sad. Our "culture of anti-government rhetoric" has been sculpted to treat the government as a monolithic entity. Government is government. Thus, a story about an invasion of privacy or one like this, about perverting speech, can be turned into an attack on the EPA or health care reform or an argument against the regulation of financial markets. The government can't be trusted, after all.

Even worse, that paranoid atmosphere is exactly what drives legislation like the Patriot Act in the first place. People want to feel safe, it's self-propagating.

If you really want to stop this sort of abuse, what you need to foster in your self and in others is not paranoia, or mistrust, but confidence. Keep your outrage, that's certainly appropriate, but recognize this as a problem that can be fixed and move towards that solution.

Try to focus on arguments of fact, not arguments of person or source. Then you will weed out most deception.

Unfortunately, that's not how discussions are conducted in practice. Everyone always thinks that they argue rationally and factual, and it's always the morans that disagree with you that are _ing blind idiotic sheeple for not seeing the obvious truth of your position. Just look at the pro/con climate change discussions here here on/., the heated US Rep/Dem discussions, or even the iOS/Android pie fights.

Add to that an entire industry that manufactures plausible rationalisations and helpful facts, and you have all the ingredients for large-scale underbelly-based public discussion that is easily manipulated.

Try to focus on arguments of fact, not arguments of person or source. Then you will weed out most deception.

You are correct to an extent. The challenge is that, in many instances, we cannot all be experts on every topic. Even Bill Nye must rely on the summaries and conclusions of experts. In those instances, we are forced to make judgments--and argue--about sources.

I wish I could propose "reason" as an alternative, but in my own experience and observation, there are some very well reasoned propositions that reach absurd conclusions.

That leaves the Bucky Fuller solution: we have to test our propositions and see ho

Not just NSA. My money is on FSB as well. It seems that a similar tactic is being used in the neighbouring countries of Russia to sow distrust towards the state, the elected officials and the system of government as a whole. No hard data to back it up, obviously, but I am enough of a masochist to read online reader comments and one does not have to be paranoid to see an unsettling trend there.

You get modded down because you use misleading information and outright lies to push your painfully obvious agenda. Everybody that reads Slashdot with any kind of frequency came into this article knowing full well you would be here spin-spin-spinning.

If ever there is any support given to one of the United States' "enemies" or anything bad said about the NSA you are on that like white on rice. You set off everybody's bullshit detector because you make defending the party-line your Slashdot persona.

So far, Cold Fjord ( http://slashdot.org/~cold+fjor... [slashdot.org] ) has posted 17 comments to this 200 comment thread. Almost 10% of the comments. And while he/she/they ("it" hereafter) are bitching about the mod system, only 4 of those comments are rated 0. That means that someone not familiar with Cold Fjord's shilling and reading Slashdot, will be exposed to its BS and could very well be influenced by its misinformation and lies. That makes Cold Fjord and its bosses in JTRIG, successful.

A better question might be, "How could this possibly be furthering out national security interests?", and if it isn't, "Why the hell are they wasting my money on programs designed to further their own egomaniacal agenda?".

I mean, isn't this self-serving and public-harming behavior exactly what got them in to hot water in the first place?

Frankly, if they still don't get that abusing the hand that feeds them tax dollars isn't in America's best interest, then they don't deserve to be an organization. Let the CIA and FBI pick up their responsibilities and disolve the NSA altogether. They are a waste of money, a waste of manpower, and are wasting our liberties.

4) Therefore, anything that reduces our power (or threatens to do so) is a threat to America and needs to be dealt with.

5) Go To Step 2.

It's an infinite loop. The more power they have, the more "potential threats" they see (real or imagined in an attempt to justify their power), and the more they see any reduction of their power as something that will cause horrible things to happen.

I agree, although I also think there is a strong element of "not on my watch" covering of the ass. No one in the West wants to be held responsible for the next 9/11, so gathering *all* the information on everyone seems a prudent exercise to prevent being blamed because *you* didn't do something to prevent it, no matter how flagrant a breach of the public trust, laws, etc.

If a bunch of crazy hobos are arguing over whether or not a coin toss will come up heads or tails, the party that guess correctly does not deserve vindication. In other words, the validation of a prediction does not imply the reasoning behind the prediction was sound. Some idjit will misinterpret this as saying "It was a random chance that the gov was spying on us", or something equally stupid (I won't respond to such idjitness).

Seen the Snowden character assassination even here on Slashdot. "Look at that traitor with the dodgy face, not the highly unconstitutional government surveillance program which basically takes a huge dump over your privacy rights!"

Huh I had a feeling that Snowden bashers were shills fed talking points, their syntax and language was too uniform. Guess my shill suspision may have been right. Now if only there was a good way to counter them, short of being an insider.

Assange too. Notice how Daniel Domscheit-Berg (who I still suspect was a plant all along, sent in to sabotage WikiLeaks) has made quite a little cottage career off disparaging Assange? Looks like the CIA/FBI has somehow gotten to his ghost-writer now too.

And Domonique Strauss-Kahn. Just a few months after challenging the supremacy of the U.S. Dollar, he suddenly decided to become a rapist (the NY prosecutor even went as far as calling it a "Rock-solid case"). Then, literally *3 days* after his successor was sworn in at the IMF, suddenly the prosecutor decided that he wasn't a rapist anymore. WHAT an amazing coincidence!

And Domonique Strauss-Kahn. Just a few months after challenging the supremacy of the U.S. Dollar, he suddenly decided to become a rapist (the NY prosecutor even went as far as calling it a "Rock-solid case"). Then, literally *3 days* after his successor was sworn in at the IMF, suddenly the prosecutor decided that he wasn't a rapist anymore. WHAT an amazing coincidence!

I loved the DHK case. It was so transparent. When that case broke, I said to a friend of mine, "He must have pissed off the wrong people." It was so clear that he was targeted. I figured it had something to do with him seeking the French presidency, but it's always hard to tell the real motivations behind these things.

And they're still trying to assassinate Julian Assange's character (see yesterday's Slashdot stories) in a transparent attempt to divert attention away from their highly illegal/unconstitional behavior.

Re -look at all internet posts telling me so http://www.theguardian.com/tec... [theguardian.com]
Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda (18 March 2011)
"contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations "without fear of being discovered

It's nothing compared to what Assange has been the target of. I'm kinda surprised they didn't try to make out Snowden was a pervert of some kind, but maybe it didn't work as well as they had hoped with Assange so they are trying other things.

Indeed, it does. I have personally been attacked along these lines as well (although by incompetent cretins, because they were two and did not coordinate, so the cheap emotional manipulation attempts were blatantly obvious as they were working from the same script), and fortunately it was just trying to influence opinion in a forum. But this scum seems to be everywhere now. For example, the Linux community increasingly gets manipulated to accept bloated, insecure and centrally controlled components that I c

The U.S. Supreme Court responded to these questions by outlining the fundamental purpose of the amendment as guaranteeing "the privacy, dignity and security of persons against certain arbitrary and invasive acts by officers of the Government, without regard to whether the government actor is investigating crime or performing another function."

Unfortunately that doesn't change the court rulings that have found the NSA and FBI actions that many find so disagreeable as being legal. As far as I have read they are complying with the law.

Since there is at least one ruling [washingtonpost.com] that finds the NSA's surveillance of US citizens as "probably unconstitutional", it remains to be seen if the NSA is actually complying with the law.

And I see you're more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Not sure what's worse, a shill, or an amateur apologist. At least I can somewhat comprehend the motives of a shill. The apologist, not so much.

Nope and nope. Missing the point entirely, but I imagine this happens a lot.

As far as my judgment goes: it has been shown repeatedly that the NSA has been conducting surveillance on American citizens for the past few years in direct violation of the Constitution, which is not merely "law", but rather the foundation for all laws of the United States. It's hard to make this point any clearer: the US government has basically been flaunting the Bill of Rights. Let me state it even more clearly: as outlined in t

What part of "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." don't you understand? Here is the source of that quote.

At the very least, freedom of speech seems to apply to/. and other Internet forums. True, NSA has not made a law restricting it, but since Free Speech seems to be protected by the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, polluting Internet forums without legal authorizations to do so could open the possibility of a legal recourse for not respecting the Constitutional Rights of U.S. citizens.

As a reminder, it seems that GCHQ and NSA have created fake Slashdot sites to trap European citizens. They have violated the US Constitution and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They can, therefore, be considered as unlawful organisations engaged in unlawful activities.

This does not mean, in any way, shape or form, that other intelligence organizations are not violating basic human rights of free speech and free assembly. We are being spied on and manipulated in a panopticon way, which is designed to silence and stifle dissent and basic human rights.

What you've just stated is a "dodgy fact." Apparently you can invent pretty much any claim about the constitution, the actual law be damned.

The thing with the cold fjord posts is they're almost too predictable. Someone states something like "NSA doing nasty unconstitutional stuff" and there's a immediately a naive rebuttal like: "Nuh uh, not true, you're the nasty one." Like he's supposed to be caught, maybe to distract from the real -- more subtle -- shills. A "search satisfaction error" exploit.

Governments have been doing this for a very long time, the only difference now is the media in which it is delivered.
Previously it was the newspaper and radio, now it is the Internet. Playbook stayed the same.

Honestly, why bother with even that. Manning, Assange, Snowden... the character assassinations have been redundant with national attention span. Someone exposes some wrongdoing you did? Instead of shooting them or saying mean things about them, just wait. Wait... wait... aaand everyone has forgotten what they said on their own.

I feel like the character assassinations, legal attempts, and perhaps actual murder attempts are absurd symptoms of the people at the NSA et al genuinely thinking of themselves as the good guys and everyone who isn't with them as bad guys. The spooks seem to be drinking their own koolaid. I'm not sure if that's more terrifying than an efficient, cold-blooded, impassionate government conspiracy or not.

well. that would explain why maharishi mahesh yogi was accused of all sorts of things. and why various scientists get "discredited". it would be interesting to consider how best to counteract these measures, although Mr Maharishi Bounces-on-the-Mattress Mahesh Yogi had a tactic that seemed to work: ignore them....

Re it would be interesting to consider how best to counteract these measures...
Consider Poland or East Germany or areas from the late 1970's onwards. The methods used ranged from removal (death, exile, prison, house arrest) to a formal invite onto TV to 'debate' the issues hoping that lack of media training, an accent would sway many people that the gov was correct via a more charming representative.
The way to win is just to keep publishing, keep sending out information to many people about events, contr

The notion that shills are poisoning the discourse itself poisons the discourse. Shouldn't we then treat whoever brings forward this notion as a troll?

It's not just the NSA. It's evident in forums across the web that there is quick, coordinated trolling of any discussion of climate change or health insurance - the main targets of the Koch Bros' web of disinformation front groups.

What remains to be seen is whether the Koch Bros' fronts and the NSA are allies in these efforts to poison the watering holes, sharing techniques and perhaps even operatives. There's clear evidence the NSA has spied for American industrial interests, for instance against Petrobas in Brazil, which competes against some of the Koch Bros' firms.

Isn't it the dilettante who is too ignorant to see through the shill who ultimately poisons the discourse? The shills are usually hyper-polite. It is the hobbyists who start to amplify the shill's message and get hurt feelings when they are corrected that start with the swearing and personal attacks.

The NSA would never use shills to alter and/or direct web discussions. Most citizens of the western world misunderstand the intelligence enterprise as it relates to counter-terrorism, which contributes to the NSA's limited ability to develop necessary anticipatory knowledge to mitigate risks, or respond to emerging threats. People who insinuate that there are NSA shills on web forums demonstrate a clear affinity and tendency to support for the cyber-terrorists that infiltrate our webspace.

At best federal agencies hope to sway public opinion. they dont want you to do what they tell you, but rather to want to do what they tell you. the government predicates their position upon the conviction that online forums are no different than a public forum, which could not be further from the truth. Tea Party 'town halls' are a prime example of the FUD and disinformation tactic being used to disrupt a political group in power. Its a functional effort to turn civil discourse into a cattle car by injecting audience that stand, scream, and then immediately sit or defend pointless illogical opinions to run down the clock.

the internet interperets ignorance, malice, and poorly defined opinions and conjecture as spam, and has for 15 years honed tools and systems in online forums to ensure. the 50 clandestine posters in a free software forum defending SOPA or PIPA will, nearly instantaneously, be downvoted to oblivion in a system which is very much designed to keep the topic of discussion of relevance. systems like karma and abuse tracking dont exist in meatspace forums, but these are tools which members can use to shut down abusers or track malicious participants who abuse the tools as well. and finally its worth nothing to poison one forum when in its place dissuaded or frustrated posters can erect 10 more. mobility is a moot concern on the internet; a luxury meatspace forums just dont have.

Assume that this report is true (I note that this is not the first time that we have heard this sort of thing) and take the NSA/GCHQ aims at face value and desirable: ie that they are acting to prevent harm to people in their respective countries.

What they appear to be doing is to damage some innocent people to prevent harm to some other people. I can understand that this might be a trade off that is worth paying - paid by the innocent people. I am far from convinced that this trade off is right or moral; but for the sake of this argument - I will accept it.

So: we have an equation, it is worth it if: Number-of-people-protected > Number-of-people-harmed.

It is, of course, more complicated. The above assumes that the amount of harm is the same in each case, this will not be true. Arguably the worst harm is someone being killed. There are lesser harms to individuals: financial loss, loss of reputation, damage to personal relationships (estrangement from families, divorce,...), loss of liberty - these all seem to be results of the sort of tactics that the article talks about.

The difficult part is ranking the harms, so how much financial loss is equivalent to loss of liberty or death ? Cleverer people that me might be able to come up with a rough ranking.

There is also the general harm to society that is caused by gumming up free discussion and exchange of information.

Once we have done all of the equations: are we, as a society, better or worse off ? This is the big question.

The other question is: who is better off ? I said ''society'', but is that who this is really who benefits, might it not be politicians, powerful business people, those who work at NSA/GCHQ ? If those who suffer from these actions are different from those who gain - the cost equation changes depending on which camp you find yourself.

I note that some of these same tactics are also used by some large corporates who wish to protect their profits or confine knowledge of their wrong doing.

Sorry: I did not explain myself adequately. My point is that even if we assume that what they are doing is reasonable, moral,... does it justify the cost ? I suspect that it does not, so why is it happening ? I am trying to argue from the point of view of those who think that it is a good idea, ie: even within their parameters it is not an overall benefit.

Right now the social networks are flooded with alleged "discoveries of fraud", according to which the opposition is spreading pictures from protests elsewhere as being from Venezuela right now. It's interesting that the original photos are very easy to find in the internet, but the ones supposedly shared by the venezuelan opposition are nowhere.Either the venezuelan opposition is dumb enough to get pictures that are widely available and spread them as their own or there's some seeding taking place in hopes that the opposition will get framed by spreading a false pic that was given to them by someone else.

Right now the social networks are flooded with alleged "discoveries of fraud", according to which the opposition is spreading pictures from protests elsewhere as being from Venezuela right now. It's interesting that the original photos are very easy to find in the internet, but the ones supposedly shared by the venezuelan opposition are nowhere.
Either the venezuelan opposition is dumb enough to get pictures that are widely available and spread them as their own or there's some seeding taking place in hopes that the opposition will get framed by spreading a false pic that was given to them by someone else.

The powers that be really do not want anyone in the US thinking that what is going on in Venezuela is at all okay. I don't know if it's the socialist angle, but all we hear are bad things about Venezuela. We hear about how horrible their living conditions are and how corrupt their government is. Hugo Chavez was constantly demonized in the media. We even tried to overthrow him back in the early 2000's.

The US has a long history of disrupting successful socialism in South America. I figure that's what's going on here as well. Our government doesn't want anyone getting the idea that socialism could work to raise up a people. Capitalism has to be seen as the only way; in order to prop up the fabulously profitable system the oligarchs have constructed.

, and most importantly - self restraint - seem to be missing from intelligence services. This has always been the case.

The difference today is that we pretend we're in a "war on terror" because if you don't pretend it's an active war, you can't even begin to justify the ridiculous kinds of constitutional subversion and 'National Socialist' behavior that would make a WWII veteran pick up his rifle and start shooting (probably beginning with Congress.)

It's really pretty simple. America has always been a country with flaws, but at least we didn't promulgate torture as policy, we didn't systematically suspend habeas corpus. We may have always been pretty shallow on the greed and capitalism side of things all along, but we've always aspired to be better.

Now, because 3000 people died on 9/11 because some a**hole wanted to change America, we torture people and call it enhanced interrogation, we detain people (even American citizens) without any form of due process or the hope of habeas corpus, the government actively spies on its own citizens, government bodies lie to Congress without being censured, our government routinely lies to the American people about what is actually happening during drone strikes, we now attack people inside sovereign countries on a regular basis without that country's permission or knowledge, we have a 'homeland security' (how jingoistic and propagandist is the term 'homeland' in that phrase? LOL) The 4th amendment has been corrupted so that anyone can be searched at any time for no discernible reason at all. Last but not least, you can now, apparnetly, order the death of an American citizen without any form of due process at all by perverting the "clear and present danger" rationale.

Congratulations Usama you f***ing c*nt, you managed to change America. Not that it will benefit the Islamic world in any way, you've simply changed our government into the government you always thought it was, to the detriment of both America and the rest of the world (especially the Muslim world.)

Sorry to break it to you but we have very rarely held the moral high ground. We systematically killed off the Native Americans. We locked the Japanese in internment camps. We carried out medical and military experiments on US citizens and military personnel without their consent or knowledge. Some of these people died and it took decades for the Government to apologize to the families of the victims. Our government put MLK on surveillance, planned to discredit him and smear him in the public eye. The CIA facilitated drug trafficking. Our government hatched plans to attack US cities to try to drum up support for an invasion of Cuba. The US has a long and rich history of violating human rights in the name of security.

TL;DR: We have been doing this shit for a long long time. Because of our dominance we get to write the history books and therefore your average person is ignorant of the crimes of the US government. It would disturb the general population so they just don't discuss it. Anyone who would care already knows, anyone who doesn't already know probably wouldn't care.

The referenced source document (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/) uses the abbreviations GBR and NZL for two of the members of the Five Eyes community. I worked at one of those five establishments (retired before 1998) and for all of the the 28 years during which I worked there, the standard abbreviations were UK and NZ, as in
CANUKUS Eyes Only and
AUSCANUKUSNZ Eyes Only.

I wonder who wrote the source document and why the standard abbreviations weren't used.

Russia is doing this sort of thing pretty extensively. On one of the national forums I happen to frequent we know who these people are - in fact, they are not really in hiding (though they never officially confirm or deny their identity). Human psychology works in curious ways, though - even though the perpetrators are well known, the rest of the community still gets into extensive discourse that includes these people and even allows them to steer discussion in whatever direction they need to. I have to giv

Standard herd psychology instructs us that you only need to control a relatively small percentage of the perceived crowd support in order to sway the behavior of the whole herd.

You can see this in effect here. When AGW comes up, the tone of the discussion tends to swing either one way or the other after a brief period at the start where it is determined which camp will dominate. After that point, people with opposing views will more often stay quiet for fear of being mobbed by group consensus, and those in the majority feel confident in mobbing.

Take a look at the whole Slashdot Beta outcry. When more than half the posts were complaining about Beta, the Slashdot lords actually responded.

But these are just pocket instances. In the context of the whole internet and society at large, a highly consolidated stance in one forum will be counterbalanced by the opposite view in another.

Cohesive group consensus across the whole of a large population becomes very unlikely, and the decision makers can simply follow their agendas without worrying about large blocks of public opinion forming which might actually result in real pressure to stop them.

Mobs need to feel like a mob to act like a mob. When you keep a herd factional through the injection of artificial objections, the mob never coalesces into something which gets out of control.

There are whole disinfo thrusts designed just to promote stupid, argumentative view points in order to confuse any given issue. Confusion prevents herds from stampeding.

Then, when the leadership really wants something to happen, (like a war), the media kicks into overdrive to create the impression of a cohesive message and the confused cattle follow because their own ability to decide amongst themselves has been so exhausted and the need to move in SOME direction due to a high state of anxiety is overwhelming. -And that state of high anxiety is maintained through a variety of controlled pressures.

The system works really well, as we have seen. The oligarchs haven't been stymied at all in their activities. They got all the wars they wanted and maintain control to this day.

Infiltration, astroturfing and reputation destruction are as old as the hills. Such as this not really amusing story of a Muslim organization turning in a member who was hyping terrorism, only to discover he was an FBI infiltrant:

I think such things are to be expected. It sucks, but if you've a security vulnerability in any system, you can expect it to be exploited. The question we should be asking is, can online groups adapt to account for such possibilities, and how?

No, really not. We should recommend the governments in Israel, Syria, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Mexico, China, North Korea and New Jersey to finally implement all those surveillance systems, sting operations, character and person assassination techniques our agencies use to finally make their countries better places.

How is that irony? And, much more important question, how would you come to think that it is any different in the USA, UK or any other western countries? Whats the point of trying to change the focuse of the discussion towards Russia? They all have been doing that since even before the Internet existed. I can't see how things could have been any different in the Internet Era.

As to "sheltering" Snowden, it seems he was in contact with the Russians before his arrival in Moscow, and that his arrival was no surprise. In the view of a number of former Soviet bloc intelligence officers, Snowden was collaborating with them for some time.

Poor quality graphics. Ridiculously complex infographics. Irrelevant pictures. Overuse of mantras. Incredible lack of consistency. A powerpoint presentation this bad has to be from a government or a large corporation.

Yes the press can take all the whistleblowing material to various private sector security experts and ensure they are not been used in a larger intelligence operation.
e.g. a forgery meant to last a news cycle vs much real material hiding long term disinformation to bait the press or other govs.
The actions of a gov can be telling too - validation in the press days later and many wonderful paragraphs and pretty pics in the left and right press.
The next question for the press is that of been used for a lim

At one point or another, you have to believe someone. Greenwald & Snowden are, to me at least, a lot more credible than anything the NSA and GCHQ may say or do.

Fact: we know Snowden worked for NSA. The NSA has admitted as much.

Fact: we know Snowden has left NSA with a cache of several thousands of classified NSA/GCHQ documents. The NSA has admitted as much.

Fact: we know Snowden has communicated most of these classified documents to Glenn Greenwald and associates. They have both said so many times.

The fact that the presentation is amateurish does not diminish its value or disproves its origins - after all, GCHQ boffins are not required to take PowerPoint courses... or are they? (We won't know either way - don't bother replying to that question).

Reasoning just five minutes shows that the quality of the presentation or the smartness of its content is irrelevant to the information it imparts to us: that we are under surveillance, and subjected to relentless secret "psy-ops". That information alone is chilling.

Genuine training materials can vary from section to section, contractor to contractor, gov to gov, year to year....
Also the idea that you only give a broad overview to all new cleared staff is just good basic security.
It would mostly be for introductions and training i.e. what can be done and might need rushed computer support on varied servers around the world.
e.g. ip locations that seem local, spelling, using the correct free IM for that part of the world, ensuring back dated logs, looked and feel to a

A slashdot sock puppet could follow the classic ideas in "The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies (spooks, feds, etc.)"

Slashdot moderation makes it a lot harder. For example, off topic rants are down modded to oblivion, and the structure of the reply tree make forum sliding much more difficult.It would be far easier for the NSA to destroy Slashdot by buying it, then changing the way the forum works.

No GCHQ is a well loved benign organisation that has never been wrong or done harm. It is frequently confused for GHCQ, who was responsible for phone tapping, dodgy dossiers and more. GHCQ is believed to be run by that dubious organisation "liberty" together with those who want to cut spy funding.

I was just thinking, if I wanted to create enough fear that our my enemies would be looking over their shoulders everytime they used the internet, nothing would work better than creating the belief that I was omnipresent on the web. One the one side, people are certain that the government in incapable of managing the simplest of programs or managing it's own affairs, but when given the notion that that same government could orchestrate a massive campaign of internet monitoring and targeted strikes again individuals, most seem to have no doubt of it's validity. Every other week there is a new revelation of the widening scope of the NSA powers to peer into every aspect of our lives and yet when asked, people still believe that same government is buying $400 toilet seats. Perhaps the biggest conspiracy is that the NSA isn't omnipresent, but wants you to think they are.

The Government is not one thing, and can therefore be incompetent and quite competent at the same time. I don't think anyone doubts that our elite special forces soldiers are quite good at what they are trained to do. And I don't think anyone doubts that the ACA website was a disaster at roll out. Same government; effective in one area, ineffective in another.

And the $400 toilet seats were money laundering in action, but people still seem to think some bureaucrat was dumb enough to pay $400 for a toilet